What I’m Looking For
by Darth Stitch
Summary: Little Zachary Nightroad isn't afraid of the dark. After all, Daddy's there to kick the Monsters' butts. Futurefic for the Milk Tea series. Features Cain & Abel. COMPLETE. Added w/ an essay/author's notes on writing. Editing & some small details added.
1. Chapter 1

**What I'm Looking For  
**By **_Darth Stitch_**

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**DISCLAIMER: **Trinity Blood was created by Yoshida Sunao (R.I.P.) and is now an anime directed by Tomohiro Hirata and produced by the studio GONZO, as well as a manga drawn by Kiyo Kyoujou.

**AUTHOR'S WARNINGS: **Trinity Blood is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Roman Catholic Church/the Vatican is portrayed as a military power as well as a spiritual one. The series also strongly implies major and controversial changes in the Church, such as women being bishops and cardinals as well as romantic relationships and quite possibly marriage between members of the clergy. If this disturbs you, do not read any further.

Earlier stories in the Milk Tea series can be found on my FF Dot Net profile.

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_**I have spoken with eternal angels  
**__**I have held the hands of a devil  
**_**_It was warm in the night  
__I was cold as a stone_**

- "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," U2

Little Zachary was not afraid of the dark.

Most children were terrified of the monster lurking under the bed or that awful boogieman living in the closet. There were ways to fight these nefarious creatures, as any sensible child knew. The best way was to keep the light on, even just a nightlight, because these terrible things absolutely _hated_ the light. Some children also knew about the Secret Trick of making sure one's feet was firmly beneath one's blankets so that they would not be tugged out of bed by the ankle by a Thing's cold, clammy claws. Hiding under the blankets so that the Monsters would not see them was a good idea too.

However, Zachary did none of these things and was not afraid of any monster or boogieman.

This was mainly because Daddy would kick the bejeepers out of any boogieman or monster who dared to hurt Zachary. And Daddy was _very, very_ good at that, even if he acted silly sometimes. Zachary actually enjoyed it when Daddy was being silly because they would laugh and play together. Daddy was really good at hide n'seek, for example. Actually, Daddy was good at _seeking_, because he wasn't very good at hiding; Zachary could find him easily because he chose really silly places to hide. Zachary was very good at hiding himself and he knew all the best places where it would take _ages_ for any other person to find him. However Daddy always found him and that meant running at full speed along the hallway, Daddy hot on his heels, while the nannies would frown disapprovingly and Mister Virgil would try not to laugh really hard.

Hmmm. Maybe _both_ of them weren't very good at hiding after all.

Mommy would laugh at them and say that she had _two_ little boys to take care of, instead of _one_. Zachary would then have to remind her that _Daddy_ wasn't little. In fact, Daddy was _very_ tall and riding on Daddy's shoulders and seeing the world from that lofty height was a fine thing indeed. However, being on Mommy's lap was nice and cuddling her was also wonderful, because Zachary knew that would make Mommy smile again. Sometimes, Mommy was sad and worried, especially when Daddy was away fighting monsters and other bad people. It was Zachary's solemn charge to take care of Mommy while Daddy was gone and both his parents said that he was very good at doing that.

Sometimes, Daddy would be sad too, although Zachary didn't know why. However, he would climb up on Daddy's lap and hug him just like he would Mommy because that made Daddy's sadness go away and he would smile and be his silly self again.

Auntie Seth and Auntie Isabel (who wasn't really his aunt, but was his gramma but she didn't look like anybody's idea of a gramma so he called her Auntie instead) were also very fun to play with, whenever they came to visit. Auntie Isabel also knew how to do magic and when Zachary was a _lot_ littler than he was now, she would make her Crusnik Turtle Abelcrombie fly and dance for him. In fact, Auntie Isabel and Auntie Seth got him his own Crusnik Turtle, who kept him company when it was time for bed. His aunts were also not afraid of any monsters and they were also very proud of Zachary for being brave.

Zachary's Daddy was very brave and very strong. In fact, Zachary wanted to be just like him when he grew up. Zachary was only four now so that wouldn't be for _ages and ages_ and ages but it was something to look forward to.

One night, a monster came and snatched Zachary from his bed.

Zachary tried to be brave, even when the monster pinched his arm with its claws and made him bleed. The monster took him to a very dark place with very little light. And even in the light, the shadows seemed to be made of many other Scary Things that could only want to eat little boys.

Daddy once said that people were being really brave when they had to face scary things like these but would fight back anyway and do the right things, because they had people they wanted to protect. Just like Daddy protected him and Mommy and all their other family and friends. Just like Mommy also was being brave by ruling her people well as a Queen and wanting to make peace and not fight with other people like the bad people wanted everyone to do. So Zachary tried to be brave and to fight even when the Monster said things like this:

"Little Prince, we shall make a feast of thy flesh and send thy bones back to thy mother."

Zachary kicked it in the shins and tried to run but he was snatched back by the monster. And there were other monsters who surrounded him, all laughing with sharp claws and wicked teeth. Other people would call these monsters _vampires_ and not Methuselah like Uncle Ion and Auntie Astha, who were definitely nice, even if Auntie Astha hit Daddy on the head sometimes and called him a "pumpkin-head" which didn't make sense, because Daddy's head wasn't a pumpkin.

Grown-ups were so _weird_.

Anyway, these bad vampires wanted to make everyone afraid and fight each other, like Zachary heard Daddy talking about with Auntie Caterina and Mommy sometimes. (Zachary liked Auntie Caterina and in fact thought she was _very_ pretty.)

"Brave little Prince!" said one of the monsters and they laughed again.

"Let me go! My Daddy will be very mad if you don't let me go and you won't like it when he's mad!" Zachary shouted.

"**He **_**is**_** right, you know," **said a strange, almost familiar voice. **"My brother has quite a temper and you really don't want to test that. Put the boy down." **

"Mein Herr!" said the vampires and they all knelt down to this very strange person who looked a little bit like Daddy. Scratch that – he looked a _lot_ like Daddy except his hair was a different color and he dressed all in white.

This Mein Herr person knelt down so that he could look at Zachary better. Just like Daddy and Zachary too, his eyes were the same color blue. His eyes turned red when he saw Zachary's wound.

White wings unfurled from his back and he stood up. **"I thought that my orders were perfectly clear. The boy was not to be harmed."**

The vampires looked at each other, confused. The one who had hurt Zachary said, "Mein Herr?"

"**Not a hair on his head was to be touched. Not a scratch on his precious skin," **The Mein Herr said almost in a sing-song voice. And then, he struck out and the vampire who had hurt Zachary fell over with a big hole in his chest. And there was a lot of blood everywhere.

The Mein Herr turned and spoke to another strange man with very long dark hair. **"What sort of help have you been hiring, Isaak? They displease me greatly."**

The man named Isaak bowed. "Forgive me, Mein Herr. As always, your wish is my command. Shall I administer suitable punishment?"

Another vampire spoke out, "Now just a minute – I thought this boy was to be our hostage to make the Queen of Albion bend to our will!"

The Mein Herr person only looked at him and the vampire turned very white. **"I will leave the rest of you for my brother… and he is not as merciful as I. **" And then, the Mein Herr person picked Zachary up and took him away from that awful dark place.

"**Does your wound pain you, small one?" **The Mein Herr asked Zachary as they seemed to go up and up and up this endless stair. It was very weird to be carried around by this person who was like-and-not-like his Daddy and thinking of that made Zachary sniffle a bit. He didn't want to cry but this was very scary and very confusing and he really, _really_ wanted his Daddy and Mommy at that moment.

Something cold brushed against his skin, quick as thought and Zachary saw that his wound was suddenly all gone, as if it were never there. He looked up at the Mein Herr who had a little bit of blood on his lips.

"What did you do?"

"**A kiss, small one, to make it better. Doesn't your father do that? Kiss the hurt away?" **

"Mommy does that to me most times." Zachary inspected his perfectly healed arm and then looked up at the Mein Herr again. "Um. Thank you?"

"**You are most welcome." **The Mein Herr smiled at him. It was a bit like Daddy's smile. Really this was beginning to give Zachary the creeps.

They came to a room that had very large windows overlooking the sea. The Mein Herr set him down and Zachary walked to one of the windows and then began looking around. There was a desk in this room, like Mommy's when she needed to work and a lot of shelves with a lot of books. However, there weren't any storybooks – they all looked like grown-up books and not very fun.

"Will you bring me home now?" Zachary asked. The Mein Herr was scary because he put a hole in that vampire and even the other vampires were afraid of him but then he took Zachary's hurt away. This all didn't make sense. It was beginning to make Zachary's head hurt.

"**Perhaps. Perhaps not. I should like to keep you. Perhaps it will be a novel experiment, to be your new father. Would you like that?" **

Zachary frowned. "No. I'm my Daddy's little boy, not yours."

The Mein Herr laughed. **"Oh, yes you are, so very much your father's son.**" Again, the Mein Herr stepped closer to Zachary and knelt right next to him, brushed a lock of silvery hair out of Zachary's eyes. **"You look so much like my beautiful Abel. And you have grown so much since I last saw you."**

Again, Zachary frowned. "I've never met you before. Who are you?"

"**You were only a baby, just born, when we first met. And surely… you must have guessed who I am by now. Do I not look like your father?" **

Zachary nodded, hesitantly. "You do. A little bit."

"**I am your Uncle Cain." **

_Uncle Cain?! _Zachary's eyes went wide and the Mein Herr laughed. It was beginning to scare Zachary, the way he looked and sounded and acted like Daddy but not Daddy, even though he hadn't hurt him, not the way the vampires did.

"**I was supposed to kill you before you were born – you and your mother," **_(Uncle?!)_ Cain said softly. **"She is my Abel's precious one and she was so round and full with his seed in her… so beautiful… so perfect… she took the sorrow and the dark away from my Abel's eyes and I found that I could not hate her. And then, I beheld you, took you into my arms first, covered with your mother's blood and you were as beautiful as my brother, his exact image in miniature and the best part of all there was no hate in your newborn eyes…"**

Zachary did not quite understand what Cain was saying but there was Something Terrible and Dark in his eyes that definitely frightened him now. Something that wasn't quite _right_.

"**I used to like the sorrow and the dark in my Abel's eyes; they made him all the more beautiful. I killed Lilith first because she took that away but I have made my Abel hate me and now he will never forgive…never love me again…"**

But there was sadness there too, just like Daddy's…

Daddy had said that to be brave was to fight on, to do the right things even when they were very scared.

So, Zachary reached out and touched Cain very, very gently on the cheek.

Cain's eyes went wide.

And then, the window blew in and Daddy was there, dark wings outstretched, his scythe in hand, looking very, very _angry. _He was covered in blood all over but it didn't look like he was hurt. Maybe he had to fight the vampires first before he could get to Zachary all the way up here.

"**Let. My. Son. Go."**

Oh boy. Daddy wasn't very happy at all.

"**Come now, Abel, I only wanted to see my nephew," **Cain said cheerfully, standing up and once more unfurling his own wings. A long black spear appeared in his hands. **"Surely you would not begrudge his Uncle Cain a chance to say hello." **

"**A fine way to say hello, snatching a child from his bed at night!"**

"**Shall we fight here?" **Cain asked him. **"You are scaring the boy." **

"No, he's not scary," Zachary told him. "It's only my Daddy." Here was the reason why Zachary never feared the monsters – he'd never been afraid of his father in that other form, ready to fight them. He never minded when Daddy had his fangs on and his eyes were glowing red. Daddy had once been forced to show that when monsters came for Zachary and Mommy and he was so sad because he thought Zachary would be scared of him. But how could Zachary be frightened of his very own Daddy?

Since Cain didn't seem to be stopping him, he toddled over to his father, tugging on his robes, wanting to be carried up into his familiar, much-loved arms. Which Daddy did, immediately, holding him very close and kissing him briefly on the forehead.

"**Twice now you've spared my son's life, although you had to go and put him in danger first. What do you really want, Cain?" **

Safe now in Daddy's arms, Zachary thought about the strange look in Cain's eyes and his words. There were so many things that he didn't understand here and there were some things that he almost comprehended now and it was hard to put it into words but he tried, he really did: "He's very scary but he's sad too, just like you sometimes, Daddy."

And then, Zachary called out to Cain:

"If you made Daddy mad, maybe you should tell him you're sorry. I say that when I do something bad."

Both Cain and Zachary's father looked at him with identical bemused expressions on their faces.

And then, Cain spoke first. **"As I have said before, he is very much his father's son."**

Daddy said quietly, **"He is also very much his mother's child as well."**

"**Father Nightroad," **Cain called him by that name that some people gave to Daddy sometimes, which always made Auntie Seth giggle. **"As a priest, should the devil seek forgiveness, shall it be granted to him?"**

"**The Lord forgives; I am only human, not divine," **Daddy answered him and there was that same sadness in Daddy's eyes that Zachary had recognized in Cain.

"**And I am not my brother's keeper…" **Cain murmured. **"Will that always be your answer, Abel?" **

"**As I have said before – I am only human. But… I had a brother once and I loved him." **

And at that Daddy spread his wings again and they flew away from there.

Daddy's cheeks were wet with his tears.

They would stop in a clearing where Daddy would hug Zachary again and thoroughly inspect him for any other injury, although he wouldn't find any. They would go home where Mommy waited and where he would be hugged and kissed again and not let out of her sight for even just a minute. There would be warm soup and hot chocolate and safety in his father's arms where the monsters would never get him.

But Zachary would never forget his last sight of his strange Uncle Cain, who was weeping too.

**-end-**

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**Author's Notes/Omake: **

**Darth Stitch **(to her Cain Muse)**:** OMGWTFH CAIN?!

**Cain Muse** (points to Zachary): But he's SOOOOO CUTE! Can't I keep him?

**Abel Muse** (outraged): OH HELL NO YOU MAY NOT!! (brandishes scythe)

**Cain** (pouts): Even if I say pretty please with milk tea & thirteen sugars on top?

**Abel**: I'd send the devil a pair of footie pajamas first – so I say again, HELL. NO.

**Cain **(singsongs)**: **You're a priest, aren't you _not_ allowed to swear?

**Abel: **… (sweatdrops)

**Zachary** (to Stitch): Why is my uncle so WEIRD?

**Darth Stitch** (sweatdrops): Beats me, kiddo. He's supposed to be our resident psycho villain but _ohhhh noooo…._ He has to try for a redemption arc too!

(Sorry, talking about Cain Knightlord makes me swear. A LOT. Pardon the language.)

I am of the firm belief (and you guys have seen this in my stories) that Cain is a fucking PSYCHO, always has been, always will be. It would probably be more accurate to say that he is literally Abel's mirror image, because they do and think things through along the same lines although for different purposes. Cain has that same happy smile, that same diffidence and apparent carelessness and absentmindedness about things… only it terrifies the shit out of you because you damn well know that he can rip you apart if the whim takes him. I imagine if you know Abel very well and you're confronted with his brother, you're going to get the creeps because there are so many things just plain _wrong_ about Cain. Cain says it himself: "I am a Crusnik. A being who needs nothing and therefore a being who needs everything."

You have to wonder how Abel makes it through sane and whole with 100 percent fusion of the Crusnik nanomachines while Cain does not. I tend to think that there has been something rotten in Cain from the very beginning.

Sure, Cain desires the love and adoration and acceptance of people, as Abel does (well, maybe Abel will skip on the adoration part because… uh… eww? WTF?). The difference is that _Cain_ wants to go about it by ridding the world of the people who do NOT love him, who will not bow down and call him "Lord." Abel however wants to earn his atonement by protecting the humans he had once hated, to carry on what Lilith had asked of him. Abel, who was once Contra Mundi as Cain was, no longer desires that kind of power – not that he actually ever did to begin with.

It's not easy wandering about in Cain's mind – it's a sick twisted place. Does he love his brother? I think so. Is that love one any of us will recognize as a healthy, thriving sort of thing? HELL NO. That's why I have a hard time swallowing the notion that Cain is good, Cain is nice, Cain is sugar and spice…. Do I pity him? In his madness, yes. There is something pitiable about the Cain in this story although I still wouldn't get a mile of him. I don't care how cute he is or the bishounen thing. You couldn't _pay_ me to get within a mile of that psycho.

Do I have a story on how in the hell Cain Knightlord was present at the time Esther gave birth to Zachary? Um. Yeah. Somewhere in the vast lumber room that is my mind. I think. (gulps)

I have tried to mirror the confusion and pity one must feel around this Cain Knightlord in the person of our little guy Zachary Kyrys Nightroad (heh, his full name). As you've surely noticed, he definitely is Daddy's boy with a touch of his mother's compassionate nature. No, Zachary will not make nice with his Uncle Cain. Make no mistake, the lights are on but Something Terrible is at home in Cain Knightlord's head and Zachary is perceptive enough to see it. Will there be some kind of reconciliation/resolution/redemption for the Nightlord twins? We'll see where the story takes us. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to think it over and make it believable.

As always, your reviews and feedback are much appreciated!

(Yeah, the next Tea story in continuity will follow soon. I'm trying to get my thoughts organized here… never fear. Hehehe...)


	2. An Essay On Writing

_This is something only if y'all are interested in giving it a read. Think of it like an Afterword for the Milk Tea & Thirteen Sugars series so far. _

**Author's Notes On Writing**

Giving constructive criticism is a tricky business.

Nine times out of ten you're going to end up offending the author (even the professional writers are only human and they would prefer positive rather than negative feedback) and really, why bother tearing apart a badly written fan fic when you've got a handy back button and can get out of there, sparing yourself the agony? The best critic you can have is your beta reader – at least you will welcome what he or she has to say in order to improve your writing.

If you're new to writing, even just fan fics, try getting a beta reader that you trust and that you see whose work is pretty good. A good beta reader will not only call you out on your grammar and spelling booboos, he/she will also raise things like plot and characterization, very important if you want to tell a great story. Even if we're just playing at writing, we want to tell a great story in the best possible way. If we just dash off something carelessly and expect great feedback, why bother? You just end up being lumped in the 95 percent of junk that can be found in FF Dot Net. Wouldn't it be better to see yourself in the recs list of many other folks, being a favorite author, having your story be a favorite story, winning fan awards, getting tons of reviews?

So, that being said, I'm just sharing some things that I've done and definitely work for me. I write for work (yes, professionally, though not as a creative writer for fiction, alas!) and for fun. I can't help but enjoy telling stories, what can I say? I don't claim to be an expert but I hope what I'm sharing will be helpful.

**On Writing Children**

If you've read _all_ of my stories, you've probably seen that I enjoy writing child characters and they are (as of the moment) Zachary Nightroad, Arthur James Potter-Snape, his sisters Katerina and Waverly and of course Jason White from the Superman Returns movie.

If you want to write a child character, then you have to remember this: Children are people too, with their own distinct personalities and their own sensibilities. Child logic is _not_ the same as adult logic. No child, unless he or she is unusually precocious, will wax eloquent in a story. Overly precocious, smart children are a pain the ass to write. They'll be too smart-aleck, too knowledgeable, too unbelievable. They're not really kids; they're just adults in small bodies.

Unless you are deliberately writing a child character who isn't really a child but just looks like one such as Seth Nightlord or Isabel, don't write a prodigy or a genius. Even if they do know a lot, their essential sensibility is still that of a child, rather than an adult and you just get stuck with a really annoying character (unless this is your intention). Even Isabel mostly stays a kid in _Broken Wings_, only ending up revealing her true nature at the very end. I portray her as pretty smart for a four year old but that's what she is – a four year old. She throws Abelcrombie at Abel's head to get his attention, she plays with Seth, she likes Esther for being 'motherly' towards her. It's when she gets her head back together that she now expresses adult sentiments and logic.

Try to think about how you perceived things when you were a kid. There is a monster under the bed. If you turn on the night light, the monster will go away. If you eat seeds, they will sprout in your body and will trail leaves out of your ears and nostrils. If you swear on your mother's name and you tell a lie, you're sending your own mother to hell. A pinky or a spit swear is a sacred promise and must never be broken. Your imaginary friend is _not_ imaginary; he/she is SO real. Things like that.

Heck, Lilo from _Lilo and Stitch_ is pretty much who I was as a kid! Except I never had a blue fuzzy alien buddy capable of mass destruction. Heh.

Make friends with children. Talk to them, listen to them. _**NEVER**_talk down to a little kid – that's insulting! I'm sure you guys resent being talked down to and a kid will hate that as much as you would. Ask them about the things they like, the cartoons they watch, their games and plays and _listen_ to what they have to say. Play with them. Be observant of what they do, what they say, what they think.

I've been blessed by an abundance of small cousins and the children of my co-workers and my boss who have become my friends. Their insights have frequently astounded and delighted me and they've very much inspired a lot of my child characters. I've spent many an enjoyable hour pretending I was a Jedi or a Sith and having mock sword fights with my buddy Benjamin with rolled-up papers. I've also told silly stories to my wee cousin Erica and been asked to tell her more about the "funny ghost with the curly hair." Cousin Sandra used to tell me all about her adventures with her beloved stuffed toy "Polly Bear." My officemate's daughter once asked her how a blind person would dream.

When you draw from life, you get a much more believable character. These things strike a chord with the readers because they will suddenly remember that _they_ used to do things like these too or their children now do. Why is Harry Potter such a successful character? Because he's a regular kid. He may know magic but the way he thinks and the way he does things is something most regular kids would do.

When you create a child or try to speculate on a canon child character's personality, don't try to make him a complete copy of his parents. You are not a clone of your parents – so why should the character be another clone?

Zachary Nightroad, for example, may look exactly like his Daddy Abel but he has his own distinct and unique personality. He's not going to have quite the same hang-ups as his father does but given who and what he is, he does have room for angst much later in life. He tries to be brave and there is courage there but anybody's courage would fail if they were faced with Cain Nightlord. He is essentially a kind-hearted kid and surprisingly sensitive enough to sense someone else's pain – mainly because he's grown up in a family that's very loving. Abel and Esther have been very affectionate towards each other and to him as parents so he's gotten lucky in that respect.

It is true that there are kids who do not pick up on the undercurrents of emotion between adults, but actually, most of them do. They just don't know how to process this and retreat in playing or make-believe. Zachary and Jason White in my Superman stories can sense this in the adults around them but they simply lack the vocabulary and the knowledge to express what they feel. This brings me to another favorite maxim of mine, so very hard to do:

**Show; don't tell. **It's been hard to learn this, as many favorite writers that I love have put in their forewords or essays on writing. I'll give some examples:

Zachary _was an adorable little child who looked exactly like his father Abel. He had the same silver hair and icy blue eyes. He was very mischievous and very close to his father._

Okay, that's a classic example of _telling_ and really, it just flat out states things, very boring, doesn't stimulate your imagination. In _What I'm Looking For_, the story implies that Zachary resembles his Dad but I actually come out and say it this way:

_The Mein Herr laughed. __**"Oh, yes you are, so very much your father's son.**__" Again, the Mein Herr stepped closer to Zachary and knelt right next to him, brushed a lock of __silvery__ hair out of Zachary's eyes. __**"You look so much like my beautiful Abel. And you have grown so much since I last saw you."**_

It is _Cain_ who clearly gives us the idea of what Zachary looks like. I also _show_ how close Zachary is to his father through the little details of the two of them playing together and how very much he idolizes his Dad because he repeatedly thinks about what his Dad says and does. We can get clear mental images of Abel at his silly best bonding with his son. We also know that there's history between Cain and Abel but I _show_ this in their brief bit of dialogue. So I leave the picking up of undercurrents and subtext to the readers and _not_ to Zachary.

One of my favorite authors out here for the Trinity Blood fandom, Perhelediel, does an excellent example of showing and not telling. She could've said "Esther is nervous around Abel, who she hasn't seen since his 'death'." But she shows it in the little details – Esther fidgets, she blushes, she goes to Abel and wakes him from his much-deserved rest with a silly little story about not knowing what they were going to do. Give us scenes, give us details that illustrate your point and you will be telling a better story.

**On Writing Original Characters**

Okay, a _lot _has been said about Mary Sues and Harry or Gary Stus and how they are a pain in the butt, because they're simply the author in disguise, living out their fantasy. They're perfect and beautiful and they solve all of the problems that the main cast has and oh wow, aren't they great?

That's nice – if you were about ten years old going into the pre-teen stage. I did it when I was a kid. I had the little girl Jedi Jesse Gray, who became Isabel, who eventually found her footing and balanced out simply as a _character_, with her own faults and weaknesses, rather than a Mary Sue.

Come on, kids, I know you guys can do better than this. We have kids-turned-professional writers who've outshone us grown-ups!

Here's a thought about your Original Character – if your Original Character is going to do something in your story that can be done by _any _of the Canon or Main Characters, why bother writing them?

To illustrate my point:

I wrote a story called "On Sense and Sensibility" – found in the fic _Points of View_ on my FF dot net profile. Originally, this was a conversational piece, intended to be very funny, on how Harry Potter comes out to his friends while watching the movie _Sense and Sensibility. _It was told from the point of view of an Original Character and I couldn't get anywhere with it. One, I had to explain who the OC was and what she was doing there. Two, I had to have a plausible reason for her to be hanging out with Harry and company.

I knew I was wandering too close into Mary Sue territory so I decided to think which of Harry's friends would make a better narrator, whose personality is closest to my OC and can fill her place instead. Answer? Hermione Granger, of course. Hermione's perfect because she's a know-it-all and yes, she can be insightful enough. So I used her, the story was written and it was pretty successful. I didn't have to delve into the background of an OC no one would care about anyway.

It's a sad, sad truth, guys. We readers rarely _care_ about OCs, especially OCs who are taking center stage rather than the Canon Cast. I want to read about _Abel_ or any of the Trinity Blood gang; not how Sister Mary Sue or Father Gary Stu waltzes in, has torrid love affairs with whoever they want with the cast (all the bishounen boys of TB have suffered this) and makes it all happy fluffy sweet ever after. Sure you can write about the second generation of the Trinity Blood gang but if everybody's going to be an OC anyway and we won't see the Crusniks or anyone else that makes the anime/manga recognizable, why not just make your own original story instead? Even I have to tie Zachary in with his father and uncle because it's simply not interesting to write a solo Zachary story who will not be facing off against any recognizable TB character.

Kyrys and Isabel have played important roles in the Milk Tea series but I have been careful to keep them as a plot point, not as the focus of the story. They may help Abel resolve the problem he's facing but they cannot solve all of his issues. Abel finds Kyrys and learns something surprising about his past but Kyrys doesn't stay to fight at his side. I love Kyrys dearly because he's one of my main original characters and he's appeared in my Castlevania stories but there was no way in hell I could have him share the stage with Abel. Kyrys will essentially be doing the _same_ thing Abel is doing and it's Abel Trinity Blood fans want to read about, not my OC. Kyrys makes a great character to play off on but he cannot take center stage and that's why he's dead in my Milk Tea universe.

Same deal with Isabel. Isabel helps Abel defeat the spell that tried to control him and answers the question on the nature of his new bond to Esther. She's a sorceress on an even greater level than Isaak by virtue of her more extensive knowledge (she's been around for thousands of years now). Since she too is Revenant and she's seen the phenomenon with Kyrys, she knows the nature of a vampire's mating blood bond. However, she cannot defeat Cain Knightlord – she doesn't have that power and there's the complications of his blood tie to her, however inadvertent that was. Plus, hey, bottom line – defeating Cain Knightlord is Abel's job, not hers.

She can't get rid of Abel's angst and she can't become his new little sister/mother figure. They are friends but the relationship is too new for anything else to develop. She will, in the end, become closer to Seth, simply because she's living in the Empire with her. Does this mean Isabel is ruling the Empire with Seth? Of course not – she's just an advisor and that only when Seth asks her help.

When I do an OC and decide to put him/her in a fan fic, I really try to think it over if they are going to fit in smoothly in the fanfic universe without shoving any of the main canon cast offstage. What kind of role should they play? How will they help the Main Canon Character achieve his/her goal? What sort of people are they going to be? How do I flesh them out so they make more sense, be more believable and obviously not just Mary Sues or Gary Stus? This is why Isabel mostly has a mentor role and even Kyrys too. In the end, I am humble enough to admit that they are only my created characters, not necessarily as cool as the canon cast of my fan fic. I may finally sit down and flesh out _their_ original fic universe and let the rest of the world decide if they really like them. But FF dot net is definitely not the place for them.

If you notice, the earliest stories I have on my profile are evidence of how I've wrestled with my OCs and tried to write stories with them. I haven't always been successful as I grew to realize that I have to make them mesh better with the main cast, especially since the main cast should rightly be the focus of a fan fic, not an OC.

So that's my piece. Keep writing, keep trying, keep telling the stories. Learn from your favorite writers on the net and in the professional world. Read. Read. Read. Most of all, have fun and don't give up on writing!


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